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A Jewish Columbia University student alleged that he and his friends were shoved and he was elbowed in the ribs after a violent anti-Israel mob took over a library on campus Wednesday.
"It felt like a stampede. My friends and I were shoved, it wasn’t clear if it was because we were Jewish, or it was just a mob action. Later, when I was in the lobby of the library, a supporter of the demonstrators walked past me and elbowed me in the ribs. It was surreal," a Columbia Ph.D. student originally from Israel told Fox News Digital.
He said that the demonstration inside Columbia’s Butler Library – in which hundreds of masked agitators swarmed the building, pushing public safety officers as they forced their way inside – kept him stranded inside for three hours in an "extremely hostile environment" while he was trying to research.
The Ph.D. student said that public safety officers were able to put the room on lockdown after 10 or 15 minutes, but that swarms of demonstrators attempted to push their way past them from both directions.
Protesters blanketed a table with fliers that glorified an alleged terrorist. (Fox News)
"There’s this mass rush of people swept in, they were all wearing masks, the keffiyehs came out, the masks came out. There was a lot of shoving, the mob inside was really just trying to ram through the security," he told Fox News Digital.
Eventually, public safety officials escorted him outside the main room of the library into the lobby. The student, who was wearing a yarmulke, claimed that at that time a woman walked past him and elbowed him in the ribs.
The Ph.D. student told Fox News Digital that he was also subject to antisemitic verbal abuse by the unruly mob, and that this was far from the first time.
"I was called a genocider, I was called a perpetual victim. That was just yesterday," he said.
Columbia acting president Claire Shipman condemned the demonstration as "utterly unacceptable."
The rabble-rousers were seen putting stickers over security cameras, vandalizing desks and bookshelves in the library, chanting, "Long live the intifada!" and pounding on drums and screaming through bullhorns as frustrated undergrads attempted to study for their upcoming finals, according to students present at the time.
The words "Columbia will burn 4 the martyrs" were scrawled across a library display case, according to the Columbia Jewish and Israeli Students social media account.
Another social media account showed a demonstrator yelling, "Don’t let this guy in, he’s a f—king Zionist," when a Jewish student attempted to enter the library.
Protest stickers were put on the doors at Butler Library at Columbia University's campus on May 7, 2025 in New York City. Anti-Israel protesters held a demonstration inside the Butler Library on Columbia University’s campus, disrupting finals week. ( Indy Scholtens/Getty Images)
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"I was in shock. I couldn’t believe what was happening," Columbia sophomore Josh Segal told Fox News Digital.
Segal, who had just left the library to grab a coffee when the commotion started, said he heard demonstrators who were prevented from entering the library chanting for Hamas’ Al Qassam brigades. The Al Qassam brigades are the Hamas military troops who perpetrated the Oct. 7 terrorist attack which saw nearly 1,200 people killed, thousands wounded and over 250 kidnapped.
"It was utter pandemonium. There were hundreds of students studying and doing work. Everyone was in utter shock. The students who were doing work were forced to leave," said Columbia senior Eden Yadegar.
"It’s finals, and I’m already far behind. I couldn’t do work the whole day because my stuff is stuck there. They chanted, ‘The worst terrorists are American imperialists.’ Personally, I think Hamas is up there," Segal said.
There were 80 arrests after the incident, police sources told Fox News Digital, which Yadegar praised as a "step in the right direction" for the university, which has become a lightning rod for antisemitism following the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.
Yadegar, who double majors in Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies, claims the protesters are misrepresenting their treatment by the public safety officers at the scene.
New York City police arrested dozens of Pro-Palestinian protesters on Columbia University on Wednesday evening after they took over part of a central library in New York, USA on May 7, 2025 (Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu via Getty Images)
"The protesters are trying to spin this narrative that they were brutalized by public safety, that they held them hostage in the building. Public safety did everything they could to keep students safe, and encouraged them to leave the building. All they had to do was show their IDs to leave. They refused to do that because they’re hiding their identities like the terrorists they dress up as and emulate," she said.
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Yadegar said she hopes the university suspends or expels the "violent, entitled, self-centered" demonstrators.
"They’re disrupting the university, they’re spewing vile antisemitic things. making a mockery of a very real war, and the fact that there’s American hostages being held hostage by a terrorist organization," she said.
David Spector is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to [email protected].
